AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9131, 2 July 1908, Page 7

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

(From a Correspondent).

This is the off-season with the dairymen. Few at tins period of the year do more milking than is necessary to meet their own domestic requirements. If one paid a visit to the dairy farms one would find the owners busy for the most part in repairing cowbails, mending fences, cutting wood and gravelling back yards or approaches. Enquiries as to last year's dairying results almost invariably elicits the reply that the season just passed has not been too good, even in spite of fine prices, the explanation being the late unusually dry summer of which we have all heard a good deal. But the dairymen are optimistic withal. Feed is still plentiful, and the present appearance ; of the herds would suggest the proba- < bilit} of next season opening with the cows in good condition. This is a very important matter, for every dairyman knows that the quantity , and quality of the milk supply is largely teiermined thereby. Many suppliers to the various creameries and factories who at the bjginning of the late season were thinking of reducing, if not entirely getting rid of their herds, and going in for sheep-raising, have altered their minds in view of the instability of the wool market, as revealed by recent London saie&. Now that wool "returns," more particularly those dealing with the May sales, are coming to hand, not a few settlers are wearing unusually long and serious faces, and, well might they do so. While cable messages anent the wool market forewarned them to expect very low prices, the returns in question have disclosed a condition of affairs even worse than was anticipated. Chatting to a Kaitiwa settler during the week, an illustration of this fact was given me by the quotation of his own experiences. .His wool was described in the report I attached to his returns aa ''coarse, | long and bright"—a sample superior to bush clip—yet though skirted it brought only 5d per In on the London market, while his lamb's wool fetched out 3d per lb. Last year the clip from tLe same sheep commanded 13d per lb, whereas the wool produced on his farm brought £2O per bale in 1907. Tnis year he only received £8 per bale. To many settlers in the Bush, and for the matter of that everywhere else throughout the Dominion, this slump in wool values is a very serious thing. The settlers who benefitted by the abnormally high values which prevailed last year are in a great measure in a position to withstand the big "sat-baek" that has followed. Eat not so those settlera who within the last year have for the first time taken up the business of woolraising. | As is well-known an unprecedented number of pastoral properties changed hands during the past year. In most cases the man who bought land at the high values ruling was not blessed with a plethora of capital. For ,him a continuation of high prices was absolutely necessary. Buying his ewei at anything from., 25s to 32s per head, it comes as a\ nasty shock to receive returns informing him that his wool did not realise 4d per lb nett, more especially when the scarcity of feed during the dry weather compelled him to part with his lambs at 5s per head..